GENERATIONS; A Drama Shared With Strangers

By DEBRA WEST

Published: July 23, 2006

ONE Saturday a while back, a big pickup truck and a small Toyota pulled into my driveway and, one after another, members of an extended family stepped out. I live at the end of a long drive that people sometimes mistake for a road, so at first I assumed they were lost. But they knew where they were. They knew my property in Brewster, N.Y., and how the east branch of the Croton River runs behind it. They knew that the river bends just behind our house and cuts a deep and fast-running channel where trout linger and teenagers like to swim.

The only woman in the group -- a middle-aged, no-nonsense sort -- walked up to the flower bed where I had been weeding. She was carrying a dull green box. The rest of the group -- some children, some young men, one older man, about eight in all -- hung back, close to the cars.

''My grandfather lived on this road when he was young,'' she said by way of introduction. ''He loved to fish and swim in the river. This was his favorite spot on earth.''

I looked at the box in her hands and the fidgety group of relatives standing in front of my garage. I hoped she wasn't about to ask what it suddenly seemed clear they had driven some distance to ask.

''His dying wish was that we scatter his ashes here, in the place he loved,'' she said. ''Would you mind?''

My backyard as a burial ground. Hmmm, would I mind?

Certainly, we are part of the generation that has turned the scattering of ashes into a mainstream funeral rite. Our parents bought plots in cemeteries, arranged for fine oak caskets, paid their respects in officially designated ways. But baby boomers like us -- still hanging on to the vestiges of hippie youths -- would prefer to scatter our loved ones' spirits to the wind.

But right in our backyard? That may be a little too free-spirited for me.

I answered with the dodge that is common to couples everywhere.

''Um,'' I said. ''Let me ask my husband.''

Inside, Peter and I had a quick discussion. We peeked out at the family. They stood quietly waiting. Not talking. Not crying. No Irish wake this.

We went out and got a few more details about Grandpa and where he lived (in the house across the road) and died (in Denver -- his ashes had been shipped back to his family in Connecticut). Then we said the only thing it was possible to say to two carloads of grieving relatives who show up in your driveway holding Grandpa in a box: ''We'd be honored.''

They spent a long 10 minutes in our backyard and we spent an awkward 10 minutes in front, keeping our three children where we could see them and trying to make light of the situation, for their sake, with jokes that could only turn dark.

''Maybe they're a family of terrorists poisoning the river,'' my son Sam said. It wasn't the craziest idea in a post-9/11 world, but we shushed him as they walked back to the front yard. The woman was tearful. She hugged and thanked us, then left. The human drama shared with complete strangers.

Peter and I quickly walked back to the river. What looked like ash was on the banks. Had it blown back? Had they scattered Grandpa on the ground, not in the river at all? We were unsettled. We told our children to stay away from the riverbank for a while.

Our youngest, Georgia, could not sleep in her room that night or several nights afterward. She is at the age when children on the school bus still hold their breath every time they pass a cemetery, and now our backyard was the cemetery. She was afraid that Grandpa was roaming about at the river's edge waiting to snatch her. She stayed clear of the river all summer. We all did.

Finally, by fall, we had forgotten.

Cremation, once an oddity frowned upon by many religions, is fast becoming the disposal of choice. Nationwide, about 30 percent of those who died in 2004 (the most recent year with statistics) were cremated, said Jack Springer, executive director of the Cremation Association of North America.

That number has been increasing for decades (in 1963, the first year statistics were kept, only 3 percent of the dead were cremated) and is expected to continue to rise. In 2004, some of the highest numbers were in environmentally concerned states, like Washington (65 percent) and Oregon (62 percent), but retirement states like Arizona (57 percent) and Florida (49 percent) weren't far behind. New York (23 percent), New Jersey (28 percent) and Connecticut (34 percent) were closer to the national average.

Of all who are cremated, anecdotal evidence suggests that about half have their ashes scattered in private memorial services.

It is tempting to think of the increase in cremation as yet another example of how baby boomers -- individualists to the end -- are now taking control of a death ritual. Joshua Slocum, executive director of the National Funeral Consumers Alliance, said, however, that more practical concerns were driving the cremation boom.

''People move,'' Mr. Slocum said. ''You end up living 17 states away from a parent, and it's not practical to ship a body cross-country. This way the family can get together at their own convenience and have a memorial and scatter the ashes.''

That was certainly the case for my family.

After my father-in-law died in Arizona this winter, his ashes were shipped to our house and he became part of the growing statistic. On a cold February day, we drove up to the Catskills to find the fishing hole on the Beaver Kill River where Peter had shared his best times with his father. (Somewhere behind the Roscoe Diner was the best he could pinpoint.)

We drove till we found a pretty bridge in a spot that felt right. (It was a public bridge, but still the comparisons with Grandpa in our backyard were hard to avoid.) Peter opened his dull green box and the plastic bag inside. It wasn't ash at all, more like kitty litter or aquarium gravel. Then we realized that the ash we thought we saw scattered in our backyard was not Grandpa at all, but a figment of our own discomfort with a death too close to home.